For most people with a creative streak, growing up means rebelling against clueless elders who seem to think everyone should aspire to have a nice steady job, perhaps in banking. But when Philip Gorrivan was a boy in Maine, a teacher told his parents he would make a wonderful artist, so they enthusiastically encouraged him in that direction. But young Gorrivan balked. He found his way into the world of finance, where he met the girl he would marry—and she was a banker.

But just as nature abhors a vacuum, an artist abhors a blank canvas. Even when he moved to Manhattan, he recalls, he carefully decorated his first cramped apartment. (Yet, his wife, Lisa, adds, without a single comfortable place to sit.) When they married, Gorrivan firmly appropriated the household's design duties. Then some friends asked him for decorating advice. And a decorator was born. "Sometimes you have to go through life before you realize what you're meant to do," Gorrivan explains.

The fruits of this calling are beautifully evident in the Gorrivans' Upper East Side apartment, where they live with their daughter, Isabelle, 10, and son, Charlie, seven. At first it seems like a setting right out of a John Cheever story, right down to the poodle and early-American heirlooms. But there's a much larger dose of élan than the average WASPs' nest. Take note of the dramatic black-and-white octagonal gallery, an homage to the lobby of the Carlyle hotel as decorated by Dorothy Draper in 1930. The limed-oak tables in the living room, where the family dines, are a Gorrivan design after Jean-Michel Frank. And the kitchen, with its black mirror backsplash, was inspired by Yves Saint Laurent's Paris apartment.

Grand allusions aside, the place doesn't feel precious, though antique European drawings and midcentury French pottery attest to the fact that people with particular passions live here. Even the children's rooms are elegantly outfitted, proof that one need not abandon style merely because offspring have entered the picture. "The TVs are on; there are toys out," Gorrivan says. "The kids do their homework on the dining tables."

The real litmus test, however, is Lisa. "I have strong opinions," she confides. "When we first moved in together, we had such an argument about the color of the walls, you can't imagine." But she relented on that occasion and now revels in his taste: "Having two small children, you don't usually think about living in a glamorous way."